On to the next chapter!

Here’s a look back on a fantastic 40-year career:

1984 – 20 hour/week unpaid internship at MGIC in Milwaukee.

June 10, 1985 – First professional job at First Wisconsin National Bank for a whopping $19,000 per year!? I remember jumping up and down on the furniture in my apartment when I got the call!? I met so many great people in my six years there.? Byron’s, promotion parties, ski trips to the UP, Summerfest, yesterday’s soup at New Mike’s.? I learned a lot and we had a blast.?

1987 – Waiting for the elevator on the Galleria level, I reconnected with this woman called Val who I first met in 1981 on a Miller Brewery tour. ?She and I went to Whitewater.? One thing led to another and on Opening Day of Summerfest, 1988, we got engaged after proposing to her on WKLH!

My parting gift to my friends at the bank was a c-list that popped up the Summerfest happy face when they logged in on the morning of the Summerfest opener.? Suffice to day, Cindy Gear gave me a not-happy call to make sure that was the only bomb I planted in their system.? Sort of like when she’d put a “See me” post-it on Ritter’s monitor.?

June 10, 1991 - $39,000 and the opportunity to become a consultant lured me away from the bank to join Greenbrier & Russel. I was a whiz at DB2 and COBOL back then when relational databases were cutting edge.? MGIC was my first client.? Kohl’s was my last as a consultant.

Boy was G&R a great place to work!?? For two or three years, I consulted by day and did our recruiting at night.? Around 1995 I moved into a sales role followed by managing our Milwaukee office starting around ’98.? We grew a great team and had a lot of fun doing it!?? Eric, Waz, and Howie built an incredible company.

During my time at G&R, I was pretty involved in the IT community as president of WITLA (WI IT Leadership Assoc), eInnovate, and a founder/board member of the IT Association of WI.? This helped me develop a broad network and meet so many outstanding people.

2007 – After a great 16-year run, I decided to move on because G&R was acquired by Fujitsu in ’06 and the job just wasn’t enjoyable anymore.

2007 – 2011 – Made a couple of stops that with mixed success.? One piece of advice is to let your network work for you when looking for your next opportunity.? Don’t take the first thing that comes along.

2011 – Joined Omni Resources to head up its Milwaukee office.? Jeff Lang, who I hired at G&R 16 years earlier, helped coax me there.?? I always said that managing people ain’t all it’s cracked up to be so when the opportunity arose to move into a sales role, I took it.?

2018 – A young pup named Tim Eiring from G&R’s 2000 college grad class grew into a VP role at Centare (subsequently CEO).? In talking with Tim, it felt like Centare was a smaller version of G&R from a cultural standpoint so I decided to join Tim and his fellow Centarians. Good move!

February, 2020 – I took Tim and Andy Siefkes to O’Donoghue’s to have a few beers and let them know that I had a goal to retire at 60 and planned to do so in April.? Then COVID hit.??I ended up moving into semi-retirement mode, and Val and I sold our place near Milwaukee to live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin full-time.?

August, 2021 – Centare is acquired by Rural Sourcing (now Sparq).? They were skeptical about a part-time sales guy, but thankfully they gave it a shot and it worked out beautifully.? Sparq is a bigger version of G&R full of great people who are great at what they do.? I’ve really enjoyed my time here at Sparq.

February 29, 2024.? On to the next chapter in our life!? It’s been a great run and I am thoroughly humbled and grateful for having the opportunity to meet so many smart and talented people over the years.? Life is short, my friends.? Get busy livin’ it!? Wishing you and yours nothing but the best!?